Tag Archives: Modesty

Of Boobquakes and the modesty peddlers

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Those up on these things know that today is Boobquake day, during which women are encouraged to show just a bit more skin when out in public. The point is to rebuke the Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, who recently remarked that scantily-clad women cause earthquakes.

Without commenting on the Facebook-promoted Boobquake phenomenon itself, I think it’s important to note that Sedighi’s comments, as absurd as they seem to reasonable people, exist on a continuum with the only-slightly-less absurd words of American right-wing pundits and preachers. While a great many social conservatives would dismiss Sedighi’s remarks, one suspects that most would do so more out of antipathy towards Islam than out of a genuine sense that what he said was wrong. After all, while the number who believe that a push-up bra leads to cracks in the earth’s crust are few, it’s common to hear conservatives bemoan the lack of modesty among today’s youth (and by youth, they almost invariably mean young women.)

“I can’t believe what young women are wearing these days” is an ancient lament. While it is axiomatic that what scandalizes one generation is accepted as normal by the next, it’s also true that standards tend to fluctuate rather than steadily decline. Think of the plunging necklines of the early 19th century in Europe, and contrast them with the Victorian prudishness that only emerged decades later. These things go in cycles. It’s simply ignorant to assume, as many anxious guardians of public morality do, that “things have never been this bad, and without radical (state or divine) intervention, things will get even worse.”

The real constant in history is the way in which the bodies of young women are seen as threats to the social order (if not also to the stability of the globe’s tectonic plates). Those who believe in the myth of male weakness argue that the vast majority of heterosexual men are driven mad (or at least unavoidably distracted, tempted, etc.) by women’s unwillingness to cover up. Those who don’t understand how testosterone and Y chromosomes actually influence behavior insist that they render males helpless at the sight of boobs and buttocks and uncovered thighs. The social conservatives adopt a simple formula, basing it on a creative misreading of both Scripture and evolutionary psychology (and yes, it’s notable that many right-wing Christians abandon their hostility to evolution when they see that its misuse serves to bolster their argument that women need to cover up.) The formula: social upheavals (and perhaps temblors) are caused by women’s refusal to police themselves (and each other). Since men are incapable of sexual self-regulation, God gave women (and women only) the gift of self-control. When women refuse to exercise that self-control on behalf of both themselves and their brothers, chaos results.

It’s easy to mock Sedighi. But when we repeat the lie that women are more capable of self-regulation and are therefore expected to exercise modesty as a strategy for restraining men and protecting society itself, we are taking essentially the same stance as the befuddled Iranian cleric. Boobs don’t cause earthquakes. They also don’t cause rape. They don’t cause men to be distracted or unfaithful. Exposed in whole or in part, they don’t portend the decline of civilization or of human decency. We need to repeat this message over and over again.

Building a just society means, among a great many other things, reiterating over and over that each of us has the capacity for empathy and for self-control. All of us ought to enjoy the right to delight in our bodies and display them as we choose. And make no mistake: women’s bodies are only threatening in a culture that denies the possibility of universal male accountability, and denies the reality of women’s sexual agency. (Not to mention a society that is ridiculously uncomfortable with one particularly effective way of feeding infants, but that’s another post.) Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi is an enthusiastic denier of both possibilities. But so too are many others who disguise their medieval views of human nature behind only slightly less ridiculous assertions.

Happy Boobquake day.

See this post for a take on the real biblical meaning of modesty.

UPDATE:

In a discussion on my Facebook page beneath a link to this post, my friend Joanne writes:

Showing off my boobs doesn’t really make the people staring at them committed to freedom for Iranian women

I think we all agree to that. Note that I’m not celebrating or promoting Boobquake (it ill-behooves a male feminist to do so). I certainly don’t think that displaying women’s bodies is a particularly effective tool for solving discrimination. But I do think that the enforced concealment of women’s bodies is part and parcel of the problem. To the extent that a public, media-savvy campaign can expose (pun intended) our own hypocrisy about women’s sexuality and female flesh, then I think that events like Boobquake are fine. But they need to be a spur to serious reflection and continued activism.

Check out some thoughts at the Ms. blog as well.

Of burqas, mini-skirts, and whopping presumption

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A couple of folks have asked me about the French attempt to ban the wearing of the burqa or the niqab in public. (Google about for various discussions about the not-always-clear distinctions between the two.) What is important to note is that the burqa and the niqab, terms sometimes used interchangeably and in slightly different ways in various parts of the Islamic world, both involve concealing much if not all of the face. This is distinct from the notion of hijab, which normally refers only to the covering of the hair, and perhaps the concealing of arms and legs.

Before I go any further, let me recommend this short and sensible response from Jill at Feministe. Another good post is here, at Muslimah Media Watch.

The French initiative (which has not been finalized) is motivated by concern for the rights of women. Though only a tiny fraction of Muslim women in France actually wear the burqa in public, they are highly visible symbols of a particular kind of conservative Islam, one that severely circumscribes women’s public role. It is no doubt true that women who wear the burqa do so on a spectrum of volition. Some are presumably forced to wear it; others — and the evidence for this is considerable — do so in opposition to their family’s expectations rather than in acquiescence. One person’s oppression, after all, is another’s vigorous assertion of independence and identity.

Reading coverage of the burqa story in the mainstream and feminist media, I’m struck by what a number of other feminists have also noted: the degree to which those who claim to be acting on behalf of women seem to be certain that they know what women are actually thinking. Concealment of the body that goes beyond a cultural norm is automatically read by some as oppressive, something no woman in her right mind could want for herself. It reminds me of the same damn argument I hear from some of my students about classmates who dress in more revealing clothing.

We’ve all seen it happen in the classroom on a hot day (of which we have a surfeit here in inland Southern California). A young woman walks into class a few minutes late. Perhaps she’s wearing a mini-skirt or very short shorts; perhaps she also has a low cut shirt or a tube top on. From at least some of her fellow students, she will be on the receiving end of both hostility and lust. Listening carefully, one can hear the sotto voce whispers, “Who does she think she is?” and “This is school, not a night club”, or even the simple, devastating, “What a slut.” In nearly twenty years of college teaching , I’ve witnessed this umpteen times. (More so at two-year schools, for reasons discussed in this post on clothing, class, and community colleges.)

When I ask young men and women why they think a female student might wear revealing clothing, most discount the possibility that she’s doing so for comfort or for her own pleasure. “She’s insecure”, they’ll insist. “She just wants attention.” Some get into advanced pop psychology: “She probably doesn’t have a good relationship with her Dad, so she needs male validation.” The notion that a girl could be expressing agency, courage, and genuine self-confidence is almost always dismissed. As those of us who teach gender and sexuality know, young people are all too often strangely puritanical in their insistence that a strong sense of self-worth can’t be congruent with sexual display. And they are certainly nearly universally presumptuous in their certainty about what their be-miniskirted classmate is “really thinking.”

The argument in favor of banning the burqa has never struck me as feminist. I’ve never for a moment bought the notion, advanced by some media-savvy social conservatives in all the Abrahamic religious traditions, that concealing a woman is a kind of feminist act. The notion that men can only respect as an equal a woman whose flesh is concealed is absurd; it sells men short and it does something even more decidedly unfeminist, which is make women entirely responsible for how men conduct themselves. The idea of mandating headscarves, or banning short skirts, troubles me. But the banning of the burqa bothers me equally.

One of the hallmarks of an illiberal, anti-feminist society is that it sees women’s bodies as threats. A society horrified by a display of self-confident sexuality is no better and no worse than one scandalized by the equally public display of deep piety. Religious feeling, like sexual feeling, is in some sense private — but it also is so much a part of us that it is unreasonable and bigoted to ask us to conceal it entirely when we come into the public square.

The French Enlightenment tradition is a fine if not untroubled one. (Rousseau makes me shudder, but Voltaire offers some comfort.) Certainly, the French grasped the rights of the individual before many of their neighbors, and they shed blood to guarantee those rights. And if there is one Enlightenment principle that I cling to, it is the notion that the right of the individual to trouble the conscience of the many ought to be damned near sacrosanct. On a public street, the right of a woman to walk unmolested and unchallenged in a burqa or a bikini is worth protecting. And when we see that woman, we do well not to rush to judgment about what particular constellation of religious and psychological influences led to her sartorial choices.

Reprint: Kosmios, Skin, and the Real Meaning of Modesty

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An Ash Wednesday reprint of a post that originally went up in July 2006.

Looks like another hot and humid day in Southern California.  I have the same classroom for all three of my summer courses, and it is exceedingly well air-conditioned.  Many of my poor students who dress for the heat end up shivering in the freon blast.  I’ve always suggested that they layer a down jacket over swimwear — the only way to be truly prepared for the unpredictable nature of our college’s ancient heating and cooling system.

I’m thinking more about modesty this morning.  I wrote about the topic last Thursday, primarily in response to the pastoral letter from the Catholic Bishop of Amarillo on women, dress, and attending mass.

I never finished the koine Greek classes I started, but I do know enough to know that the word the New Testament uses  that is usually translated as "modesty" is kosmios.  Kosmios generally means "orderly" or "proper", neither of which are helpful words in clarifying skirt length!  Given the subjectivity of what it is that different cultures and different individuals regard as "proper", it’s hard to find evidence anywhere in the New Testament that suggests a clear standard for how much skin women were to reveal.

But one aspect of modesty is well-covered (pun intended) in the New Testament: the importance of avoiding displays of wealth. In fact, the New Testament only explicitly defines immodesty not in terms of revealing flesh but in terms of ostentatious displays of property.

1 Timothy 2:9: I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes…

Gold, pearls, and expensive clothes are set up as the opposite of kosmios; the decency and propriety here is economic rather than sexual. 

1 Peter 3:3-4:  Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.

These are the two most explicit references to how women ought to dress in the entire New Testament.  In neither instance is there any evidence of concern with dress as a symbol of sexual impropriety.  In both cases, the emphasis is on avoiding crass displays of wealth — particularly gold and expensive outfits.

Continue reading →

Tired of being coddled and feared: standing up to the myth of male weakness

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A reader writes in from the East with a query. “Micah” is an undergraduate, taking a class on Gender Issues in the Workplace. He writes of a problem he has with his female professor and her reactionary views:

… in our discussion on sexual harassment, we got into a (I’m
shy to call it a discussion), on how woman’s clothing is partly to blame.
She took the position that women should dress more conservatively, and that
it’s their responsibility in this way to prevent sexual harassment. Her answer to my question “If we make this opinion the norm, doesn’t it negatively affect a woman’s ability to seek redress after being harassed, in that she as the victim is blamed?” was simply, “No”.

I don’t want to create an adversarial relationship with my professor, but at the same
time I’m frustrated at the message she’s sending to both men and women in the class. It’s awkward to be a male student trying to take a feminist stance with an anti-feminist female professor! I’m having trouble explaining my concerns, and am wondering if you could offer some insight into approaching the situation.

Certainly, Micah is in a difficult situation. Indeed, it’s frequently problematic for a male feminist to engage in an argument about gender justice with an avowedly anti-feminist woman. Most men who embrace feminism in a public way run into this particular pickle sooner or later, and it is made exponentially more challenging when the anti-feminist woman is an academic authority figure.

Despite the awkwardness, there are a couple of tacks that Micah can take if he’s willing. The best one, of course, is to challenge his professor’s low expectations of men. The notion that women are responsible for “inviting” harassment by the way they dress is rooted in the belief that male sexual desire is a problem that is women’s to manage. It’s the old myth of male weakness, a myth that suggests that those of us who are incarnate as males simply lack the capacity to control our urges. Therefore, it is women’s job to set boundaries and to “help us” overcome temptations that we are incapable of overcoming on our own. It’s a myth that’s damaging to women, but Micah can point out that it’s incredibly insulting to men.

To borrow a phrase of which conservatives are over-fond, it’s a variation on the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” It’s a complex bigotry to be sure, as the real victims of the myth of male weakness are not those presumed to be weak but those who are, because they are presumed to be morally strong, forced to assume the role of sexual gatekeepers. In the sexual harassment dynamic, the myth insults men by suggesting that all of the be-penised are knuckle-dragging, simple-minded thugs who would never get anything done at all if it weren’t for women’s careful encouragement and cajoling. The myth insults women by suggesting that while men’s sexual appetites are extraordinarily voracious and uncontrollable, women’s sexual desire either doesn’t exist at all or is so weak that it can be easily managed. (If a woman does experience intense desire, the myth suggests that there may be something wrong with her.) And above all, the myth holds women accountable for bad male behavior, forcing women to second-guess themselves endlessly while depriving men of something they desperately need, which is the chance to grow into kind, rational, self-soothing and self-controlled human beings.

Micah is right to be indignant in the face of the myth of male weakness. As a young male feminist, he is right to be furious at what sexual harassment does to women, and he is right to be exasperated at the pervasiveness of the belief that women somehow bring mistreatment on themselves through their behavior or their dress. He is certainly right, too, to be frustrated at what the dominant discourse about men, women, and harassment says about him and his fellow males. If he’s old enough to be in college, he probably already knows what it’s like to live as a relatively privileged American man: alternately coddled and feared, loathed and loved. If he pushes back — in a polite but robust way — against the damaging message his professor is sending, Micah will send a message to his classmates that not all of their male peers are willing to be complicit in the Great Lie. Whether he gains any traction with his prof is another question.

See more in the Modesty and Myth of Male Weakness categories.

Legal and topless: on myths of male weakness, and the virtues of feminist legislation

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A reader named Tracy sent me a link to this Meghan Pleitcha piece that originally ran on Nerve and was then reprinted at Alternet: What Happened When I Legally Exposed My Breasts in Public. This summer, Pleitcha took advantage of a New York state law that permits “gender equity” when it comes to baring chests in certain public settings; she sunbathed topless in Central Park, and wrote about the reactions she got from men, from women, and from her inner voice. It’s a thoughtful piece, and Tracy wanted to know my thoughts on female public toplessness and how that issue connects to the “myth of male weakness” about which I have written so often.

I’ve got a whole category of posts about modesty, and the ways in which our fears about uncontrollable male sexual desire result in our shifting the responsibility for self-control from men to women. I don’t want to keep rehashing points made over and over again, so let me offer just a few links:

In this post, we looked at the word kosmios (the koine Greek term, translated as modesty in the New Testament) and how it has nothing to do with showing skin, but instead refers to refraining from lavish displays of wealth.

In this post, the “argument from testosterone” is considered and rejected.

And I posted about breasts and the notion that men can’t help but stare here.

Though some might not regard the right to bear one’s breasts in public as the single most pressing issue on the feminist agenda, I do support the expansion of the already-extant New York law mandating gender equity when it comes to the exposure of the human chest. What “must be concealed” is a societal variable which has evolved over time. As we read in the news this week, Sudan canes women for wearing pants (something for which women were arrested in this country little more than a century ago.) In some societies, women’s hair has tremendous erotic value, perhaps as much as breasts themselves; in many cultures, concealing the top of the head is mandatory. And as anyone who has watched National Geographic specials or spent time on the beaches of Europe knows, the idea that female breasts are universally arousing to men is silly — what we find arousing is almost entirely culturally conditioned, and has far less to do with our hard-wiring than the peddlers of pop-evolutionary biology would have us believe. For reasons of fairness, as well as for the reason that the male lack of self-control is a construct rather than an immutable truth, it makes good sense to change our laws to permit women to go shirtless in public. Continue reading →

Hair length, skirt length, body odor and a bulge in the jeans: what we should and shouldn’t say to loved ones

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Last Wednesday’s post about controlling boyfriends got quite a few comments. The post dealt with two young women whose beaux wanted them to stop wearing short skirts, or to stop having lunch with decidedly platonic male friends. I don’t want to re-visit that post, but I have been thinking about the ways in which we negotiate reasonable and unreasonable requests from romantic partners. What is “reasonable” is obviously culture-bound, but that doesn’t mean that some frank discussion about the limits of compromise isn’t going to be helpful.

It seems to me that there is a colossal distinction between a partner’s expression of aesthetic preference on the one hand and a fear (or jealousy) based desire to control on the other. (And let’s be clear, the line between the desire to “protect” and to “control” is a fuzzy one, and when speaking about adults, the language of the former almost always masks the true intent, which is the latter. Obviously, the advice a parent gives to a 12 year-old about how to dress is different than that a boyfriend gives to a girlfriend.) For example, it’s not inappropriate to say the following:

“I really like it when you wear black, it suits you.”

“Since you asked, I actually prefer the blue shirt, as it matches your eyes better than that magenta one you were considering.”

My wife has, at the moment, very short hair. I like very short hair on her, and indeed, prefer it on most people of both sexes. That’s an aesthetic preference on my part, and it’s one about which my beloved is not ignorant. Over the course of our nearly six-year relationship, she’s cut it very short and grown it out past her shoulders. When it was long, I never begged her to cut it, but when she asked, I never lied about my preference. “You look beautiful regardless, dear, but if you want to know my own opinion, I think you are at your most spectacular when it is very short.” Continue reading →

“Ginormous breasts” at the gym: a response to Isky about the male gaze and responsibility

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My friend Isky sent me an email this week that revisits, yet again, the subject of women, clothing, and the male gaze. I asked him to look at the posts in the modesty category, particularly these (one, two, three) that summarize my views fairly well. Still, Isky seemed to want a specific reply to his situation. As the whole discussion may be triggering or repetitive for some, it’s below the fold. Continue reading →

A covenant with my eyes: some long thoughts on looking

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Here’s the weird thing: the overall trend in terms of hits to this blog is upwards, though it’s been fairly flat these past ten days. On the other hand, the overall trend in terms of number of comments is down slightly, even as the number of visitors rise. But what’s really going way up is the number of emails I’m getting from folks asking questions about various aspects of what I’ve posted about. Requests for advice have jumped from about one a week to about three a day, which still puts me way below an “Ask Amy” but does make me wonder about this shift.

“Marian” writes a long note about her husband’s habit of staring at one particular type of much younger woman:

From the beginning, my husband has had the dreadfulL penchant of ogling a very specific type woman: young, blonde and petite. Shall I describe myself? 5’10″, dark brown hair and eyes, and as I mentioned, 47. When I say ogling, I mean ogling to an extent I have never encountered. For instance… there is a blonde, young attractive woman at the church we attend and for quite some time he would sit the whole service and stare over at her. He began making a point to attend that particular service, although he knows I prefer to go to a later one. I remember one service where he missed a congregational response because he was so engrossed in looking at her. When I confronted him about this he finally did admit that he thought she was pretty, and I asked him why that would cause him to stare incessantly at her. His reply, and I quote, “it’s like having a beautiful bouquet in front of you. You don’t want to just glance at it, you want to savor it.”

Again, my question is, why would any 50 year old, happily married man, feel a compulsion to stare obsessively at ONLY young, blonde women? He does not look at attractive women our age, nor does he look at young, pretty brunettes. He has admitted that is the “type” he is attracted to. Let me state I am in fairly good shape for a woman of my age, I’m quite eclectic and tend to wear trendy clothing and jewelry, and when I dress to the nines for an evening out on the town I get enough comments from friends, including men friends, that I know I am not exactly a troll.

I am not asking what I should do to solve the problem, that will be up to me. I am merely wanting to know your opinion about why he would continue to do this.

Marian and her husband have apparently seen a counselor, and my first piece of advice is to continue to do just that. As for the attraction to much younger blondes, I’m in no position to figure out why someone has the particular “type” they do have. I’ve never had a physical type to be attracted to; have never preferred women from a particular ethnic background or with a particular hair color. I’ve always been a bit mystified by men and women whose tastes are so particularly narrow. I do know from talking to some of my friends who do have one particular “type” that many of them settled on this type in early adolescence, sometimes as a response to one particularly powerful early crush or obsession. (One of my friends in school only liked brunettes, and that, he said, had everything to do with Kate Jackson, the actress from “Charlie’s Angels”. It was the show he was obsessed with when he first hit puberty, and she became the “it” girl of his dreams.)

But while I am hopelessly unqualified to analyze the roots of an obsession, I am qualified to say that unless Marian’s husband is suffering from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, he’s got full control over his eyes and where they wander. The myth of male weakness says that “men can’t help but stare”, but the honest truth is that we long to attribute a personal unwillingness to exercise self-control to a universal masculine failing. “All men do it” and “We (men) can’t help it” are lies we tell collectively, and we say them so often and with such conviction that we do a good job of convincing ourselves (and sometimes, we convince the women in our lives as well.)

There are many versions of Marian’s husband’s remark about the beautiful bouquet. “Just because I’ve already ordered, that doesn’t mean I can’t keep staring at the menu” is one I hear quite often. These remarks are rooted in the sense that infidelity ought to be narrowly defined as a specific set of actions. But even for most folks who aren’t Christians (and bound by Matthew 5 and Jesus’s admonition about lusting in the heart), there’s a sense that we’d rather our spouses not long for and fantasize about others. Fidelity isn’t just about what we don’t do with our genitalia, it’s also about where we direct our hearts and our thoughts. As Marian’s letter makes clear, “merely” ogling has great power to wound.

But choosing a partner is not like ordering a meal in a restaurant. And women are not lovely bouquets of flowers. It’s demeaning and troubling to compare human beings to objects, even objects as lovely as roses. (Poets, of course, have free license. The rest of us don’t.) A bouquet doesn’t care how closely you scrutinize it; most women know how acutely uncomfortable it can be to have a man (particularly a man old enough to be their father) staring at them. It’s a rare young woman who has never been discomfited by the penetrating gaze of an older man. The power of that gaze to disquiet and to hurt is real. The French tulips don’t care how long you gaze; the young blonde at church being ogled by Marian’s husband very well might.

Similarly, the soup I ordered in the restaurant last night isn’t offended if I wonder out loud, even as I’m sipping it, as to whether or not I ought to have ordered the salad instead. “Continuing to look at the menu” sends a message to our partners that we’re not entirely comfortable with the finality of the decision we’ve made.

It is important to note that there’s a world of difference between the penetrating gaze and the appreciative glance. One thing we all have is a strong aesthetic sense. Most of us can appreciate beauty in another human being without experiencing actual desire for that person. Most men, for example, are much better at evaluating another man’s attractiveness than they let on. Most women know plenty of young men who fiercely deny even noticing whether their friends are handsome or not, but their denials have everything to do with homophobia and nothing to do with a genuinely impaired aesthetic sensibility. Women are allowed, in our culture, to be more open in their praise for each other’s appearance. But we don’t allow men to express aesthetic judgments unless they are accompanied by expressions of desire. Because we insist (entirely falsely) that men’s judgments about beauty must be tied to their libidos, we shame men out of praising the looks of their male peers. We also teach men that sexual attraction must go hand in hand with a recognition of female beauty. By insisting that real men only find beautiful what they also find desirable, we limit the potential of our brothers and husbands and sons to be full and complete human beings.

What all this means is that I have a great deal of difficulty in believing that Marian’s husband is ogling these young blondes out of a pure aesthetic admiration. His staring makes his wife uncomfortable, and no doubt also makes the women at whom he is gazing so intently uncomfortable. Whatever the origin of his fixation on blondes young enough to be his daughter, he owes it both to his wife and to the women he finds so fascinating to exercise control over his eyes. More importantly, we need to do a better job of equipping men to have two key things that most currently lack:

1. an honest vocabulary for beauty that allows them to develop appreciation for loveliness without sexual desire

2. a sense that they are as much in control over their eyes as over their hands.

In my own life, I have — like most folks — a keen appreciation for beauty. But I can separate an admiration for beauty from sexual desire. As a heterosexual man, I can admire the chiseled features of a handsome young athlete without wanting him sexually. I can acknowledge a beautiful woman in much the same way. But I am aware that aesthetic appreciation can slip into outright desire if I’m not careful. I remain gently vigilant, but not to the point of pretending to ignore that another human being is lovely to look at.

I’m also aware that I have a responsibility to look at other people in a way that honors all of my commitments. If my looking makes my wife uncomfortable, I need to rethink how I gaze. If my looking at someone’s outsides keeps me from caring about their insides, I need to rethink how I look. If my looking makes the object of my gaze feel awkward or confused, I need to change how I look. My right to delight in another’s beauty is not unlimited; it is restrained by my commitment to my spouse and my commitment not to reduce other human beings into mere objects. As a Christian, I am called to make a covenant with my eyes, not to cut myself off from the beauty of creation, but to make sure that my eyes do not lead me to want to appropriate that creation for my own selfish purposes.

Rethinking — and rejecting — an old post about Naomi Wolf, porn, and modesty

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Vanessa at Feministing takes issue with Naomi Wolf’s cover piece this past weekend in New York Magazine: The Porn Myth. It’s not a new article, it just seems to keep getting recycled. I commented on it back in May 2004.

One of the things about blogging for several years: one’s opinions and views evolve, and one is then left with the interesting archival evidence of that evolution. While consistency is surely a virtue, so too is a willingness to rethink one’s stance on key issues, especially in light of new information or further reflection. So, since Wolf’s piece reappeared online this week, I’m going to revisit what I said in 2004. More to the point, I’m going to reject much of what I had to say three years ago.

I am as thoroughly anti-porn as it gets, as any visitor to my pornography archive will quickly read. (That sounds more titillating than it us.) I agree with Wolf’s view that pornography tends to destroy authentic sexual appetite. She writes:

The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as “porn-worthy.” Far from having to fend off porn-crazed young men, young women are worrying that as mere flesh and blood, they can scarcely get, let alone hold, their attention.

Wolf talks of chats with college-aged women who relate their anxieties about competing with pornography, and what she writes rings true with me. Where Wolf falls down — and where Vanessa was right to challenge her, and I was wrong not to do so in 2004 — is that Wolf urges women to adopt modesty and concealment as a strategy for reenergizing the male libido. Wolf is enchanted by the story of an observant Jewish friend of hers, a woman who allows only her husband to see her hair, and the rest of the time, keeps it concealed under a wig or a scarf. Wolf writes:

I am noting that the power and charge of sex are maintained when there is some sacredness to it, when it is not on tap all the time. In many more traditional cultures, it is not prudery that leads them to discourage men from looking at pornography. It is, rather, because these cultures understand male sexuality and what it takes to keep men and women turned on to one another over time—to help men, in particular, to, as the Old Testament puts it, “rejoice with the wife of thy youth; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times.”

The red flag for me in 2007 (which wasn’t there in 2004) is the verb in bold. The implication is that in and of themselves, men lack the incentive and the ability to maintain a strong and vibrant sexual focus solely on their wives. It’s a great passage from Scripture she quotes, mind you, and one I love. Married men are called to direct all of their sexual energy towards their wives, even as both they and their wives age. But it’s not women’s job to “create mystery” in order to keep men excited! While marriage is surely a partnership, it is deeply misguided (if very traditional) to suggest that wives must strategize to keep their husbands from straying in act or thought, with flesh-and-blood mistresses or with cybersex.

The story Wolf tells of her bewigged friend Ilana is frustrating for this very reason. Wolf is on awe at what she imagines is the steamy eroticism of this very traditional Orthodox marriage, and is convinced that it is Ilana’s modesty that is the cause of the continued strong sexual charge between husband and wife. Coming at the end of an article about porn, it’s hard to miss the implication that Wolf is convinced that if more women would simply be more like Ilana (creating “mystery” by hiding themselves), more boyfriends and husbands would be more sexually excited by enduring monogamous relationships.

What’s wrong with this seemingly commonsensical analysis is, of course, that it’s rooted in the notion that men are hardwired to pursue “everlasting novelty.” The everlasting novelty thesis of male sexuality suggests that women who want monogamy from their male mates need to pursue an aggressive strategy in order to overcome a man’s “natural” programming to stray, to seek out what is new, to become fascinated with seeing (or touching, or possesing) new skin. According to this thesis (so memorably satirized in Atwood’s The Handmaids Tale) women need new outfits, new hairstyles, new transformations on a regular basis in order to fool their husbands and boyfriends into thinking that they are somehow a series of different women. Call it the “familiarity breeds contempt” theory of enduring sexual attraction.

Hey, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for two people experimenting with new ideas for keeping their sexual life fresh and exciting. I understand completely that routine is indeed the enemy of eros. But there’s all the difference in the world between urging men and women not to get stuck in sexual ruts, and suggesting that women need to conceal themselves in order to capture and hold male attention. The former bit of advice doesn’t place any gender-based onus on one partner more than the other. The latter suggests that the male longing for everlasting novelty is women’s problem to solve, and that’s absolutely, shockingly, indefensibly wrong.

Whether or not promiscuity is hardwired into the male brain is ultimately irrelevant. Humans have free will strong enough to trump any programming. Just as we can learn to pee in toilets rather than wetting ourselves, we can learn not only to practice monogamy but to do so with enthusiasm. What I find so wonderfully challenging about monogamy isn’t just staying faithful. Not sleeping with other people, not flirting with other people, not fantasizing about other people — heck, that’s just the beginner’s class! (All good stuff, mind you.) The advanced class in monogamy work is maintaining strong and enduring sexual excitement. Monogamy is not merely about what you don’t do with others, it is also — at its very core — about what you do do with your partner. It is a mandate for both parties to be creative, to be persistent, to be brave. As a husband, my responsibility is to keep my sexual energy focused on my wife no matter what she wears, no matter what she weighs, regardless of whether or not she covers her gorgeous hair with a wig or a baseball cap or lets her curls down in public. My wife has the same responsibility towards me. This doesn’t mean we are obligated to please each other; it doesn’t give either of us the right to demand sex. But, practicing the mutual submission that Scripture calls us to, it means we don’t expect the other to be in charge of keeping us excited, aroused, hot.

Nothing exasperates me more than the enduring myth of male weakness. Nothing infuriates me more than the suggestion that it is women’s responsiblity to keep men focused, to keep men faithful, to keep men aroused. Naomi Wolf is, as far as I’m concerned, spot on accurate in her indictment of pornography. But her suggestion that women ought to adopt modesty as a strategy to keep their present (or future) boyfriends and husbands on track and away from porn is dead wrong.

Note: this thread is for feminist or feminist-friendly comments only.

“Do Hard Things”, but not that hard: a response to the modesty survey and the Rebelution

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Last week, Jill linked to the results of a “modesty survey”. The survey collected responses from more than 1600 young Christian men, all of whom deigned to tell young women “what they really think” about dress and modesty. (Questions were submitted, anonymously, by more than 200 young Christian women.)

I’m not a social scientist, so I can’t vouch for the methodology of the survey. I am an evangelical, a gender studies professor, and a volunteer youth minister who works with teens at church, however. I’ve got a “dog in this hunt”, as it were, and I find the results of the survey disheartening, even appalling. If you browse the results, you find many gems (the best of which Jill has already noted in her excellent post). I found this one, written as a “final thought to young women” telling:

There are many Godly men out there, as I’m sure this survey will prove, that are dying to give you their utmost respect when you choose to follow God’s leading in this area of modesty in your life.

This is one of the most disturbing aspects of the sort of theology that seems so darned prevalent among the male respondents. One of the overriding themes of the gospel is that respect isn’t earned; Jesus embraces the very people (including women) whom the rest of society finds most disreputable, and he rebukes the very folk who assume that their lives and morals are above reproach. To say, as this anonymous lad does, that “we are dying to give you (our) utmost respect when you choose” to be modest is to misconstrue the Gospel message.

Christ reminds us over and over again that anyone can love the lovable; the test is to love the enemy. In the same way, we are called to respect and treat with equal human dignity those whose clothing choices we find most challenging. To paraphrase our Lord in Luke 6:

If you respect only those whose bodies and dress do not tempt you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ respect those who arouse no desire within them. . And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ do that.

In other words, the Christian life is about rejecting the notion that human relationships are quid pro quo. To live an authentic Christian life is to live out one’s commitments with those who (intentionally or not) challenge those commitments, not merely those who reinforce them.

What I find especially galling about the modesty survey is that it is hosted by some folks who call themselves The Rebelution. They explain it here:

The official definition of the ‘rebelution’ is “a teenage rebellion against the low expectations of an ungodly culture.” When you look around today, in terms of godly character and practical competence, our culture does not expect much of us young people. We are not only expected to do very little that is wise or good, but we’re expected to do the opposite. Our media-saturated youth culture is constantly reinforcing lower and lower standards and expectations.

The word ‘rebelution’ is a combination of the words “rebellion” and “revolution.” So it carries a sense of an uprising against social norms. But in this case, it’s not a rebellion against God-established authority, but against the low expectations of our society.

Oh heck, I’ll sign on to that. I’m all for challenging young people to lead lives of justice, of compassion, of hard work. I’m resolutely committed to the notion that young people today can embrace lives of service, of sharing, and, when called for, of self-restraint. But the bold rhetoric of “rebelution” is completely undercut by the modesty survey’s suggestion that most young men are, in fact, fundamentally weak and need their “sisters in Christ” to protect them.

To promote the idea that men’s sexual desire is stronger than women’s is not counter-cultural; it’s buying into a belief widely held in contemporary society. To promote the idea that young men’s lust is so powerful that it is nearly impossible to control without the active assistance of “modest” young women simply perpetuates one of the great cultural lies of our era: the myth of male weakness. The modesty survey, far from reflecting any true counter-cultural insights, simply reinforces two nasty untruths widely believed by Christians and non-Christians alike: first, that most young women do not themselves have a strong sexual drive; second, that male lack of self-control is at least in part due to female irresponsibility.

On the Rebelution site, they claim that their movement has a Viking battle cry: “Do Hard Things”! They write:

Here’s The Rebelution’s challenge: Do hard things. Learn a lesson from the Vikings. Do hard things and you will carry the battle every time. If you are willing to take on responsibilities that others delegate or neglect you will gain the benefits of that exertion.

Too often we delegate the responsibility for our education, our character, our future, etc. to others who hold far less of a stake in how things turn out. And more often than not a failure to perform in the areas of character and competence are due to a lack of past exertion.

Gosh, leaving aside the whole silly Viking thing, that’s a message I like. This distance-running, workaholic, over-committed, underslept, vegan professor and activist digs the idea of “doing hard things.” I’m a great believer that we are called to carry a cross, called to do the hard work of building a just and peaceable Kingdom. Whether his classmate is in sweats or a miniskirt, a young man’s responsibility to see her as a complete human being is always the same. When we teach young men that self-control is not contingent on women’s dress, then we really do teach them to “do hard things.” But such a message is clearly too radical for the folks at Rebelution.

UPDATE: Kate asks some excellent questions here. It’s a long meditation on the “theory of desire” (particularly the one articulated by the Modesty Project folks), and raises some interesting challenges to all Christian narratives of sexual desire.